


Lapse

by heroictype (swanreaper)



Category: Mabel (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Freeform, Post Episode 40
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 02:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17992940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swanreaper/pseuds/heroictype
Summary: They were just misaligned. Just for a moment.





	Lapse

The house, overrun.

The house, as it should be. As it felt like it should be. The house was broken and bright and welcomed nature like it never had any human guests.

She kept adding words to her assessment, or - concepts. She was not thinking in words, only in representations. Her breathing was shallow; so were all the movements in the house, short, meaningless creaks and the vines blowing in the breeze, growing in their slow, meandering way. The house moved with her, but it would not speak to her. Beyond its solidarity, silence. 

But she had the sense that it was happier than it had ever been, a sense that unwound like the weaving on a broken loom in her stomach. This was her own joy, and she would have laughed, if she had the breath for it. 

Anna would have laughed, if only. 

* * *

How did Mabel Martin fare without her king?

She had never been meek or quiet, but she folded her hands in her lap now, delicately. Her movements were as deft as always, sure even in their softness. This was her element. The absolute of the underhill. The faces looking up at her, at the empty throne beside her, and echoing the same sentiment. The latest gossip.

How was Mabel Martin faring without her king? How long would she do as she did? The world above, and all creatures from it - maybe even those not human anymore, in any meaningful sense - were so fickle. So how long would Mabel Martin remain so confident? She would begin to mourn soon, or give in to some jealousy; she would see no need to leave the throne empty. She would understand the waste, and invent a right to claim as consort. 

How long could Mabel Martin fare without her king?

* * *

She caught herself praying. Or she thought she did. If was the structure - pattern of thought, pattern of hope. She represented before herself something that could listen.

She had not prayed for some time. She was sure that she had, actually, but she had not recognized the pattern. In her preoccupation, she had lived outside of herself, a thousand lives each with a thousand needs. Petitions, cajoling and demands, and she had answered each. Saint became god. Supplicant became strength above. 

Now, she could not even move her dry lips. She could only think, and she could see nothing else inside of her. Of course, saints prayed; their devotion was what defined them as a class, above any of their deeds. 

Now, only a thread's width from martyrdom, she could not think of who a saint would pray to. 

There was only one name for Anna to call. To think. A representation equally fire and flesh and fiction.

_ Mabel? Mabel! Mabel, wait for me. Wait for me. _

* * *

Mabel Martin listened. She listened with a thin smile propped in one hand, and a glass of wine swirling in the other. And when she didn't like what she heard, she reached out to the speaker.

Necks, shoulders, arms, hair. Mabel Martin gripped. Mabel Martin pierced and bruised with her deft, delicate hands. She only held them long enough to ask her own question, the same every time.

"I'm sorry, what was that? I'm afraid I didn't hear you."

The answers were always different. Always honest.

"I said the king won't come back."

"It's been too long."

Mabel let them go, back among the milling, mewling courtiers.

"She grew bored, no doubt. Sick of all this... politics," said one of them, and Mabel laughed, more pride than humor. She knew better than all of them. She alone knew their king, the truth of her, the thorny, delightful truth of her. Anna had no more gotten bored than she was boring. 

One of them simpered, perhaps imagining himself as the next consort, "I said that she ran away. She was a coward in the end, and we'd be better off with you-"

He was on the ground, and Mabel was above him, and from his new perspective, straining his neck, he saw the flames that ate the edges of her and her devouring them back, living through it. Her hand was still raised, her chest heaving, and the room had gone silent. Truly silent. No one, save her, needed to breathe. 

"Shut up! I mean, all of you. Keep your mouths shut about her. If I hear one more word about it, then when Her Majesty returns, I will have to ask her pardon for halving her court. Maybe I should, anyway. I know she wouldn't mind the quiet." 

She stalked from the hall, and away, to where glass and shadow became raw earth and darkness without contrast. She sat in the dirt in her silks.

"Anna. Oh, Anna…"

She took Anna's hand, the one still wrapped in flesh. 

* * *

Anna let Mabel lift her hand to Mabel's lips. Anna folded her fingers against Mabel's cheek. Mabel, kneeling beside her in the house. Mabel, never far from her, not really, not as long as they wished it. Space was as much a construct as time. That we were more limited in our perception of it, denying ourselves faster crossing in the name of dying industry, did not make it a harder line. 

"I miss you," Mabel admitted, and flinched.

"I miss you, too." One vulnerability for another. They would be equal in this way, and all others. "I miss you every second. Wait for me. That's all I can ask you to do, I…"

"I know. And I'm waiting. And I'll be ready when you need me, I promise, when it's not time to wait anymore, I won't make you wait."

The house sighed around them, catching the wind through its broken walls and taming the currents into its own expression. 

Anna smiled. "I know. You won't let me wait. If I ordered you to, you-"

"I would defy you," Mabel cut in. 

"How foolish of you."

"I would defy you. So don't try it."

"I won't. I wouldn't. So don't worry, sweet Mabel."

They each squeezed each others' hands, and then their palms slipped not from, but through each other. 

It was only a momentary lapse.

**Author's Note:**

> god I don't know I listened to this whole thing in a week and it absolutely wrecked me. I'm a changed person.
> 
> sorry if any details are off. I just... wanted to do something. love these terrible and beautiful fae wives.
> 
> dialogue is hard


End file.
